


Eventide

by asperityblue



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Palace, Sherlock Being an Idiot, Sherlock is quite frankly terrible at emotions, exchangelock, exchangelock 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asperityblue/pseuds/asperityblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's snow on the windowsills and amber flares licking up from the fireplace and biscuits on the table and a volatile experiment carelessly abandoned on the windowsill and shards of glass on the floor, and from where he's curled up alone in the middle of an empty flat, Sherlock thinks that this is possibly not the best Christmas John has ever had.</p>
<p>Written for the 2014 Exchangelock Holiday Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eventide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CommunionNimrod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommunionNimrod/gifts).



> Hugest apologies for the delay, as well as for this fic turning out more angsty than it started off (I seem incapable of writing anything but angst these days). Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and happy holidays to all!
> 
> -Asp.

There's snow on the windowsills and amber flares licking up from the fireplace and biscuits on the table and a volatile experiment carelessly abandoned on the windowsill and shards of glass on the floor, and from where he's curled up alone in the middle of an empty flat, Sherlock thinks that this is possibly not the best Christmas John has ever had. The thought makes him the slightest bit sad, twists something intangible behind his ribs. He hates it.     
  
Sherlock looks at the bandages on his forearm and the beautiful, shattered ornaments in front of the sitting room door and then at the door itself and wonders why he is so absolutely brilliant at breaking things. He'd managed to love John for five months and be loved in return for the past three, but he thinks it was always inevitable that he'd ruin them eventually.   
  
The flat feels hollow with just him in it, Mrs Hudson on holiday to visit her sister and John—   
  
He should delete it all to save them both the trouble.   
  
Sherlock falls gracelessly into his armchair, cranes his neck back and slams his eyelids shut. His mind palace is full of John, images and slivers of sound and snapshots scattered throughout the vast space. It hurts him, a sharp ache resonating from his chest out into his fingers and leaking into the air.   
  
August, he'd wanted it all. It was alright then, being reckless, because it wasn't as if he'd ever have the slightest chance at having it.

 

October, it started after a case, a brilliant one about a chef-turned-murderer and silverware laced with poison, complete with a lunatic and a perfectly dangerous chase through the alleys of London. Sherlock had glanced over, breathless and chuckling, at his equally breathless best friend and laughed out an unintentional "God, I love you."

It had taken him an embarrassingly long while to realize John had frozen in place, a careful expression on his face. Slowly, terribly cautiously, John had said, "Do you?" and Sherlock had frowned.

"Of course. For a dreadfully long while now, John. I thought it was obvious, that you were fully aware that I've wanted you for months and—"

He'd been cut off by a kiss, and for a brief moment he'd been able to hope that maybe it'd all be fine.

 

The next day he woke from a dream he couldn't remember with panic in his throat and an echo of his own voice stating critically, clinically, "He'll get bored of you."

 

In the months after, he'd scoured for the most dangerous cases, no matter how mundane, because John  liked  danger, and he'd pulled away from any attempts at kissing and cuddling because those were things John's dull girlfriends could give him. Sherlock had needed to be different, needed the adrenaline, needed John to stay. He could feel John getting tired already, more exasperated and frustrated with each passing day and Sherlock would do anything at all if John would just  stay .

 

It'd come to a break in the tidal wave the day before, when John had sat close to a female witness and coaxed and smiled softly and taken her number when they were done with her. Sherlock had been confused and frantic and the ache had suffused his entire body and that night he'd gone after the criminal alone, John's gun pressed against the small of his back. The criminal had had a knife and definitely knew how to use it, and by the time Sherlock managed to cuff him he'd had a cold numbness in his chest and his own blood soaking into the sleeve of his left arm

 

He lines the memories up, rewinds to the moment he'd started wanting more than the best friendship he'd ever had, pauses and looks up at countless forms of the same blond army doctor. Their lovely blue eyes drill holes into his skull and he hurts with the force of how much he'd have to give up to have his John back.

 

The bandages on his arm are messy, self bound in the absence of his doctor. John had been more exhausted than angry when he'd seen the injury, had left without tending to him, after wearily exhaling his final remarks, the fingers of one had digging into the bridge of his nose, the others fisted around his jacket.

 

"I don't know where you've gone, Sherlock."

 

He hadn't been talking about the case or the criminal. Sherlock doesn't quite know where he's gone either.

 

" I love you, I do, but I don't know what you want. You've been avoiding me for weeks, don't deny it. You haven't been eating or sleeping and the cases you take, it's like you don't care about them any more, like you're working your way through them just for the danger."

 

It should be infuriating, how John can still read him so well.

 

"You're destroying yourself and I won't stand here and watch it."

 

There's glitter and layers of red and gold and silver sitting in ruins where he'd thrown the glass baubles and statuettes systematically against the shut door. He tears his gaze away from the last place he'd seen John, curls over into himself, tired fingers coming up to dip into his temples and jaw. They press inward harshly as he prises his own grip off his remembered John, forces himself to just let go—

 

"What are you doing?" John, sharp and concerned.

 

Sherlock jerks, startled out of his position. He turns to the doorway fast enough to threaten whiplash, hands falling to grip the smooth leather of his chair.

 

He says, "John."

 

His doctor leans against the doorframe. He looks incredibly tired, staring at Sherlock with a worried gaze and an inscrutable expression. They don't speak for what feels like hours, those beautiful, worn eyes drilling into his own. He feels the slightest bit guilty for trying to delete them, but it's confusing, unexpected that John is back at all. He doesn't dare to hope.

 

The silence is strange and tense and it pains Sherlock that he cannot find the words to fill it. 

 

John inhales deeply and fixes Sherlock with a wry almost-smile, "I thought I'd be the better person and come home."

 

The look on John's face, eyes slightly sad but bright with determination, takes the air from his lungs, turns it into liquid that crests and breaks inside him. It  burns  as it sloshes around despite his stillness. He opens his mouth to let it out but he can't make a sound, can't think, can't—

 

"Sherlock, breathe." John, calm and ever-stable. So he does.

 

"Alright," John glances away, resting his weight on the door frame, "I'm sorry for leaving, and getting worked up." He pauses, scrubs a weary hand over his face. Sherlock wants nothing more than to reach out across the room and smooth out his exhaustion, but John turns back and pins him down with his gaze, his voice hard and serious, "I'm sorry for shouting at you, but I'm not sorry for what I said." 

 

Sherlock thinks he might be falling, through the floor, the room below, the ground, the crust of the earth. He tries to breathe.

 

"I just want my Sherlock back," John says, his body perfectly still but his voice trembling the slightest bit, like the beginnings of an earthquake, "Snarky and sarcastic, condescending at times and inappropriately excited by puzzling murders, witty and gorgeous, but also fond and affectionate and untamable and so  alive ."

 

"John," Sherlock says, because he can't find anything else.

 

"It's Christmas, Sherlock," and his voice breaks. "Could you just give me that?"

 

It makes its own way out of him, stumbling and scrambling against his throat, pushing its way through his useless mouth, clumsy, all at once, "I just wanted you to stay."

 

"I'll always stay," John says, simply, as if it's the most obvious fact in the world. Sherlock thinks about the solar system and ' ignorant sometimes' and wonders if it is.

 

He unfolds himself slowly from his chair. His legs feel unstable, like gravity has suddenly loosened its grip and they have to hold tighter to the ground to stay upright. He stares into John's fathomless eyes and strides across the room, confident— "Sherlock."—for the first time in months, a grin—" Sherlock. "—pulling the corners of his mouth up, heart warm and buzzing and—" Sherlock, the floor—

 

Agony shoots up his leg and he freezes, looks down in confusion at the shard of translucent silvery glass embedded in his bare foot. Stupidly, he puts his foot down, cries out in pain and then there are strong arms around him, one across his shoulder blades and the other underneath the knee of his injured leg. Pushing him back slightly to draw the pressure off his foot, a grunt before lifting him completely off the floor. A voice above him muttering, "Idiot, you're an idiot, a complete and utter numbskull. Stupid man, such an  idiot ."

 

John holds him closer to his chest as he makes his way to the bathroom, and Sherlock thinks they must look absolutely ridiculous, his long limbs everywhere, held in what is effectively a  bridal carry .

 

He sits Sherlock down on the edge of the tub, pulls out his kit and works on him with careful, efficient, kind hands. Sherlock allows himself to relax a little, the pain a vague throbbing that serves as a distraction to their situation. John doesn't look up until the glass in the bin and his foot is cleaned and wrapped. He shakes his head at the bandages on his arm, rewraps them neatly, gently. He leans up from where he's crouched on the ground, presses their foreheads together and his palm against the side of Sherlock's face, thumb sweeping back and forth along the prominent line of his cheekbone.

 

Sherlock closes his eyes, says, "I'm sorry," and then before he can lose his words again, "John. I love you, you know," the declaration quiet into the space between them.

 

"Idiot."

 

Sherlock frowns and John kisses him, soft and forgiving. 

 

"You're an idiot" John says, "and God, I love you too."

 

Sherlock smiles contentedly— and pointedly does not inform John about the experiment he had left on the windowsill which will very probably explode within the next twelve minutes or the fact that Lestrade is currently climbing up the stairs with information on crime scene that Sherlock will most certainly hobble to, against John's advice.

 

Ah, it's Christmas.


End file.
